Takeout stakeout

T he stickup man pulled a black gun from his waistband and crept up on the Domino's delivery guy from behind.

The unfolding villainy was frozen in the moment: Sunday night, past 10:30, the sixth of May.

But it also rippled back through time.

For police, the cellphone number that summoned the Domino's Pizza man to Dorchester's Harbor Point housing development that night was the same one used in at least three other delivery-driver robberies since April.

The crime drama also echoed a rash of similar actual and attempted food-delivery robberies across the city during the past several years: 64 in 2005, 94 last year.

But Boston police say they've turned the corner on such ambushes by successfully analyzing crime data to detect geographical patterns, and by deploy ing surveillance stakeouts and decoy operations to nab druggies and others looking to make a quick buck.

The result, according to Boston police: Numbers are down so far this year from last, 27 through May 6.

"We're catching the people," says Boston Police Deputy Superintendent Darrin Greeley of the downswing. "They realize it may be a cop delivering. They realize it's not an easy score any more."

Still, those delivering fast food feel they're easy marks.

"We carry money, we carry food, we are totally unarmed, we go where you want us to with a phone call -- and we'll go there in the dark, after hours, after normal people are asleep," says Jim Pohle, a veteran Domino's driver .

Low pay and high risk -- Pohle says he makes less than minimum wage and has been robbed three times in 17 years, including once with a gun pressed to his forehead -- led the 38-year-old driver to organize others in his Pensacola, Fla. parlor into the American Union of Pizza Delivery Drivers .

Pohle says his is the only union shop for drivers among the more than 60,000 pizza shops in the country -- so far.

"Every driver who's done this at least six months has had some delivery where they felt unsafe," says Pohle.

Tim McIntyre , a corporate spokesman for Domino's, said the company's goal is to deliver to every address, but after working with law enforcement officials, individual owners might pull back from buildings or streets that have been subjected to repeat robberies. One Boston pizza shop manager who didn't want to be identified acknowledges that some of his drivers feel uneasy going into areas that have seen previous delivery robberies. But he says he'd rather work with police to catch the criminals than give up the business, or deprive residents of their take out.

Meanwhile, Pohle says he and his fellow drivers in Pensacola are currently contemplating drastic measures so they won't have to go into areas they deem dangerous.

"We can strike," he says.

In Boston, according to news accounts spanning several years, it's the crooks who've been striking:

In 2004, a Mattapan pizza driver was stabbed in the stomach by thieves who took their order and also picked his pocket of at least $20.

In 2005, a different Mattapan delivery guy was robbed at gunpoint by four masked men who took a pizza and $300.

In 2005, three hoods wearing hoodies in Dorchester beat up a delivery driver for his pizza and ran off.

In 2006, a Boston cop posing as a fast-food deliverer helped bust a teenager suspected in holding up take-out drivers in Dorchester's Bowdoin Street/Geneva Avenue area.

In 2005, court records show, police broke up an enterprise preying on drivers in the Stockton Street section of Dorchester.

In one typical instance, the records say, a delivery man from a Chinese restaurant was distracted by conversation with a female when a male accomplice snuck up and robbed him at gunpoint of his money and cellphone.

Police cracked the case after cross-referencing the cellphone numbers and addresses used to call delivery drivers with their own investigative files, the documents say.

Up popped two hits that led them to one of the perps: a cellphone number used in the delivery robberies had been provided by someone involved in a prior altercation with the suspect, and a notation that suspect had a Stockton Street address.

During a search of that apartment, police recovered 15 cellphones, a stolen driver's license, a Winchester rifle, ammunition, and a bag of marijuana, according to the court documents.

They traced the apartment to Jeremy Taylor , now 19, who was charged with armed robbery and sentenced in 2006 to three years in prison, records show.

For police, it was digital deja vu four weeks ago .

As part of their efforts to prevent food-delivery ripoffs, Greeley says, officers routinely work with businesses to alert them to trouble spots and to ask them to keep an eye out for cellphone numbers used suspiciously.

After a Domino's driver from the Old Colony Avenue shop in South Boston was robbed in April, according to interviews and court records, the general manager put an alert into the telephone caller ID system. If the same number came up again, the message said, whoever's working the shift should immediately notify police.

Which is how a couple of undercover cops ended up escorting a Domino's driver into Harbor Point late on the night of May 6.

After getting a key from the development's security personnel, the officers took their place s inside one of the buildings. One was in the stairwell, the other in a trash closet, court records show.

The pizza guy went to make his delivery on the second floor.

Suddenly, a stranger came around the corner. The cops recognized him from a walk-through he took moments before. He pulled out a gun and approached the pizza guy from the back.

The cops pounced.

They arrested Jason Lewis , a 27-year-old unemployed Mattapan man with an extensive criminal history, and seized from him a BB gun and a pair of gloves, the records show.

Then they stood in front of a door and dialed the cellphone number that drew the delivery guy there in the first place. They heard a female voice answer the call on the other side. Kasandra Jones, 25, was nabbed with cellphone in hand. Jones lives at Harbor Point -- though in a different apartment, police said, than the one she and Lewis allegedly gave to the delivery guy.

While authorities continue to investigate whether the pair are connected to other capers linked to their cellphone number, both are facing jail time if convicted of armed assault with intent to rob for the May 6 episode.

Both pleaded not guilty and were due back in Dorchester District Court last Friday -- after press time -- for a hearing, one that will help determine how long it will be before they can order out for Domino's again.

Ric Kahn can be reached at rkahn@globe.com